Rhysdavies

5 weeks ago I have an employment offer to move to the US, something I had planned for years and finally put in place the steps to get there. Not easy for a UK citizen but I found a route via L1A visa. Then COVID landed and shattered the World Economy and millions and millions of Americans have lost their jobs.

Do expats or those in the US On temporary visa’s see COVID as having a long term impact on being able to be employed in the US from overseas when this calms down. The company in question have freezed all recruitment which is reasonable given the circumstances.

like a kick in the teeth but at least I have my health

any thoughts welcome

tom169

I don't see any long term impact as a result of CV-19 that would impact work visas.

Rhysdavies

thanks Tom
i guess my angle was if there was millions of extra people off work then I would imagine the visa criteria to prove there isn’t local labour just Got a lot harder, hate to say it, more political

Pulaski

That doesn't apply to an L-1. It may impact a green card application depending on which category your employer applies under.

That said, be aware that in the US you can be "let go" without notice in most states (all the ones I know of), so if the economy is weak that may be a very real risk if you are on a "local" employment contract.

civilservant

I, like others, don't see there being a long term impact on the recruitment of foreign labor. The fact that so many people are unemployed right now is largely irrelevant, since a large number of them (though not all, of course) will be able to return to their previous employer when things begin to get better.

Pulaski

And most of the rest, probably the greatest proportion of the total, are in jobs that are not visa-eligible, i.e. service jobs that don't require a degree, and therefore aren't going to impact applications for green cards and visa types that require a labor market survey.

steph0scope

Unless you are working in hospitality or air travel then I can't see how the L-1 process would be affected. And even hospitality will bounce back eventually. The large numbers of unemployed people are mostly people doing jobs that can't be done from home such as store cashiers, office cleaners, childcare providers, wait staff, etc. Most office-based professionals are working from home doing what they always did.

petitefrancaise

OP, what time frame do you mean by "long term".
Do you want to know how your application will be affected ? Depends on which sector you work in. Tech companies I work with are planning on June to get domestic relocations restarted. No word on international ones yet - ie nothing being planned since no-one knows when international travel restrictions are going to be eased up. From my end, I've had 2 international moves cancelled completely and both working for major multi-nationals but others are on hold.

In the longer term - I think health concerns might well put a brake on international relocations until there is a vaccine available. It would be interesting to see how DHS will handle people arriving in the USA once travel restrictions ease up.... compulsory tracking by phone? Quarantine? Testing? Although false negative results would be an issue there.
Obviously, if there is an economic recession this will affect not just industries directly affected by Covid 19 ( hospitality/air travel) . It is expensive to relocate employees to the USA so that is usually cut back if companies need to save money.
In 12 months hopefully there will be a vaccine so Covid 19 won't be the issue, we'll just have to see how the economy plays out.

SanDiegogirl

In you earlier postings you were going to move on H-1B. Now you say it's an L-1A . So the current company you are with is going to transfer you?

Rhysdavies

[QUOTE=petitefrancaise;12841550]OP, what time frame do you mean by "long term".
Do you want to know how your application will be affected ? Depends on which sector you work in. Tech companies I work with are planning on June to get domestic relocations restarted. No word on international ones yet - ie nothing being planned since no-one knows when international travel restrictions are going to be eased up. From my end, I've had 2 international moves cancelled completely and both working for major multi-nationals but others are on hold.

In the longer term - I think health concerns might well put a brake on international relocations until there is a vaccine available. It would be interesting to see how DHS will handle people arriving in the USA once travel restrictions ease up.... compulsory tracking by phone? Quarantine? Testing? Although false negative results would be an issue there.
Obviously, if there is an economic recession this will affect not just industries directly affected by Covid 19 ( hospitality/air travel) . It is expensive to relocate employees to the USA so that is usually cut back if companies need to save money.
In 12 months hopefully there will be a vaccine so Covid 19 won't be the issue, we'll just have to see how the economy plays out.

[/Do you want to know how your application will be affected ? Depends on which sector you work in.

i work in professional services and our particular firm has made pay cuts, froze recruitment etc. I don’t see any international recruitment until mid 2021..

petitefrancaise

Trump has just said he will suspend all immigration to the USA. Let's see how this one plays out.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/polit...rus/index.html

Rhysdavies

Thanks, as I mentioned earlier, I expected this to become political and you have provided some form of announcement to corroborate this. I don’t expect immigration to be normal for at least a year or two, if not longer so I may as well forgot about the US. It’s a hard pillow to swallow having an offer approved only then for COVID to destroy everything.

Rhysdavies

Hi that’s correct I posted about this positive development a couple of months ago. I thought I was confined to H1-B but it turns out with a masters in accounting and working for over 10 years in my role I was eligible for a inter entity work transfer. Only issue now is the transfer has been cancelled due to COVID and I don’t it being re opened for a long long time, now to the point I think I need to let the auld american dream go and think about going back to the UK

petitefrancaise

If it gets through - this is supposed to be a temporary ban which in reality is just extending the current situation since consulate staff haven't been issuing visas anyway. I think it's prudent to restrict travel for the next few months anyway, as I mentioned above, until a vaccine or at least a successful treatment protocol is established.

christmasoompa

Has it definitely been cancelled? Your posts above say recruitment has been frozen, but are you sure that includes transfers too?

If it's of any hope at all, my husband's company have also postponed pay rises this year and frozen recruitment, but he's today been made a formal offer to transfer to Boston despite all of that (and Trump's latest tweet!). So unless you've been told it's absolutely not going to happen at all, don't give up, the company may still need you over there. It may not happen as soon as you were hoping for, but fingers crossed you can still make the move at some point.

Best of luck.